U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/543,054, filed Aug 18, 2009, assigned to the same assignee as the instant application, and which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirely.
Typically, communication is said to be successful between two people if someone speaks and opponent party can understand. In other words the intended recipient's brain language areas can comprehend the speech. The problem of not understanding the speech of others is the cause of language barriers. So, this invention discloses a method to solve the language barrier problem where it is capable of interpreting meaning of speech in one language to a language natural to another—basically to a language the recipient brain can comprehend.
Languages are mankind's principle tools for interacting expressing ideas, emotions, knowledge, memories and values. Languages are also primary vehicles of cultural expressions and intangible cultural heritage, essential to the identity of individuals and groups. Safeguarding endangered languages is a crucial task in maintaining cultural diversity worldwide. According to researchers more than 6,700 languages are spoken in 228 countries. For example, in India more than 250 languages are used for speech. People like to speak in their natural language and prefer to communicate with others in their natural language. This makes it difficult for people to travel to foreign states or countries as they need to learn the foreign language.
Most individuals living in the United States read, write, speak, and understand English. There are many individuals, however, for whom English is not their primary language. The 2000 census shows that 26 million individuals speak Spanish and almost 7 million individuals speak an Asian or Pacific Island language at home. If these individuals have a limited ability to read, write, speak, or understand English, they are limited English proficient, or “Limited English Proficiency.” In a 2001 Supplementary Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, 33% of Spanish speakers and 22.4% of all Asian and Pacific Island language speakers aged 18-64 reported that they spoke English either “not well” or “not at all.”
In field of entertainment, if someone wants to watch a foreign movie/performance, they experience problems in clearly understanding the event. Obviously, lots of electronic translator equipments are available in the world, but it only supports popularly spoken languages.
Language barriers and misunderstandings can get in the way of effective communication and create complications in the workplace, including problems with safety. A recent Business Journal article on the rising number of foreign national workers in Charlotte-Mecklenburg's construction industry pointed out—those workers who speak little or no English are at much greater risk of having an accident on the job because of not having a full grasp of safety standards.
Approximately 22% of the Sheraton Corporation's workforce is Hispanic, primarily Mexicans. Language is the main barrier here. To help its employers deal with the language challenge, the company has bilingual employees to serve as translators and mentors. In addition, all printed material is provided in both the essential languages Spanish and English. Another example is Woonsocket Spinning Company—Woonsocket is one of the few remaining woolen mills in the United States. 70% of their employees are foreign-born. Overcoming language barriers is the greatest challenge for both workers and the employer. To help with this, the company hires interpreters or has other employees who speak the language help the non-English speaking employees, particularly during orientation and training. Studies like this suggest companies spend a lot of time and effort to overcome language barriers among employees.
Patients from under developing countries seeking medical care always need to be accompanied with human translators to explain their medical problems and also to understand physician's advice. According to a report, more language interpretation services are needed in Connecticut's hospitals, doctors' offices and other health-care facilities to provide adequate medical care to patients with limited English skills. For example, The Connecticut Health Foundation, a nonprofit group based in New Britain, found that use of language interpretation services in medical settings throughout the state is limited, resulting in problems such as misdiagnosis and patient misunderstandings about doctors' instructions. The report advocated that hospitals and other health-care providers work toward providing more face-to-face interpr
In the ever growing IT industry people from various nationalities collaborate in meetings and conferences. Due to language barrier they cannot communicate freely resulting in business people investing lot of time and money learning new languages.
Even in marketing, due to language as barrier quality retail and consumer product owners struggle to market their products on international market.
There are number of language translation systems available in the world designed and developed to translate an inputted language to another language. All these methods/systems require a device to capture the voice and deliver. Such systems are known in the prior patents as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,681 to Brotz et al for Remote Language Translating Device. This prior patent disposes the translation of conversation between the users by transmitting/receiving speech using external hardware device. But people would not prefer to carry or even remember to carry the hardware device all the time. Also the disadvantage of such system is that it can be used to convert only a certain number of languages which are pre-programmed on the device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,161,082 to Goldberg et al for Network based language translation system performs a similar task. It disposes a network based language translation system—basically has a translation software installed on the network. It proves that software over network can do speech translation, but user still has to set their language preferences. More than 67% of world's population do not or have limited computer knowledge, so they cannot set their language preferences and operate high-tech gadgets. Another recent patent is U.S. Pat. No. US 2009/0157410 to Donohoe et al for speech translating system. U.S. Pat. Appl. No. US 2009/0157410 discloses a system for translating speech from one language to a language selected from a set of languages. Such a system disclosed in U.S. Pat. Appl. No. US 2009/0157410 can be applicable only for limited amount of users but more than 6,700 languages are being used by people to express their thoughts around the world.
Another patent is U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,264 to Nitta et al for a Method of Automatic Translation between Natural Languages—this discloses a system for the translation of entire sentences. Then again it also requires an input and output device to capture and deliver the speech. It is not capable to determine the recipients' understandable language. We have to manually set the targeted language or select from pre-defined languages (as target) in the device.
According to DiscoveryChannel.ca report, by using electrodes attached to a person's face and neck, the device detects the electrical signals sent to the person's facial muscles and tongue when specific words are mouthed. The software is able to decode the information into phonemes—the building blocks of words. Since there are only 45 different phonemes used in English, the system is able to predict what phonemes are most likely to appear next to each other. This helps the device translate phrases even if it hasn't heard them before. The system won't help make peace with any hostile aliens just yet, though. It only translates correctly with 62 percent efficiency when faced with a phrase for the first time.
Although there have been many advances in system and software for providing language translation to users interested in communicating in a language other than their own language, there has not been an apparatus or method that facilitate to identify intended recipients' natural language using brain language areas of one or plurality of intended recipients. Accordingly, the present inventor has developed a system that can identify the natural language of one or plurality of intended recipients by their brain language areas and uses the identified natural language for speech translation.
Therefore to overcome all the above language barriers, there is a need for a system to perform automatic translation of speech wherein when one speaks in a natural language others are able to comprehend in their own natural languages without interpreters, hand-held device and language translation books.